"As Louise and Alan Shepard bask in the success of his mission,
Betty Grissom preps for Gus' launch and turns to Louise for
advice," wrote ABC in its synopsis. "And Annie Glenn grapples
with her stutter, anticipating that the press will want to hear
from her after John's orbit is completed." [ Project
Mercury: Photos of NASA's 1st Manned Spaceflights ]

In July 1961, Grissom launched on the suborbital Mercury-Redstone
4 mission, flying the same trajectory as Shepard's feat from
three months earlier. Glenn then lifted off more than half a year
later on board Mercury-Atlas 6, making history as the first
American to circle the Earth.

The one-hour episode spanned the space race's events of mid-1961
through March 1962, sometimes compressing — and sometimes
stretching — the timeline to intertwine the Grissom and Glenn
stories.

"Protocol" ended with a cliffhanger, at least for anyone not
familiar with the history, as the next astronaut slated to go up,
Deke Slayton, revealed to his wife, Marge, that he had been
grounded. But was it his fault, or hers?

As the episode opens,
Marge (Erin Cummings) gets a surprise visit from Anthony
Pantos (P.J. Marshall), a private detective snooping for the
tabloid "Confidential," who is threatening to expose her secret
first marriage.

ABORT! While it is true Marge was a
divorcee, and she and Deke (Kenneth Mitchell) were keeping that
quiet to avoid scrutiny, there does not appear to be record of a
private eye chasing the story, including in author Lily Koppel's
"The Astronaut Wives Club," which served as the basis for the
series.

"There is a certain degree of creative license taken in the
story, specifically having to do with the wives, and a big part
of that is that their lives were not well documented, at least
not in a factual way, as much as the men were,"
Cummings told collectSPACE.

"Adding the window."

Trudy Cooper (portrayed by Odette Annable) mentions the addition
of a window to Grissom's capsule. "With that window, he's going
to be first man to really see the Earth from space."

A-OK! As dramatized in "The Right Stuff," the
large window was added at the astronauts' own request. As Grissom
radioed to the ground on July 21, 1961, "It is such a fascinating
view out the window, you just can't help but look out that way."
He described viewing the panorama that was the Earth's horizon
and seeing Cape Canaveral laid out below.

Soviet cosmonaut Yuri
Gagarin, who beat Shepard into space, only had a small
porthole to look out his Vostok spacecraft. Shepard's situation
was similar, though he also had a periscope to extend his view
out of the small opening down through his legs.

"Liberty Bell is sinking."

Betty Grissom (JoAnna Garcia Swisher) and the other wives are
elated Gus (Joel Johnstone) splashed down safely after his
15-minute spaceflight, but that delight turns to concern when
it's reported his capsule is taking on water.

A-OK! Today you can see Liberty Bell 7 on
display at the Kansas Cosmosphere, but that is only due to the
museum's efforts to find and raise the capsule off the ocean
floor 38 years after it was lost.

Soon after landing, the capsule's hatch blew, letting the ocean
rush in. Grissom was ultimately rescued, but his capsule, now
flooded, was too heavy for the recovery helicopter's lifting
capacity and it was cut loose to sink.